Wow - that is something very different. A kiosk to burn a new game to an EPROM cartridge.

In the 2nd generation, games were both very expensive (to me, at least) and often an unknown quantity. You had screenshots on the back of the box and very little else to tell you about the game. Buying a game for me was both a rare treat, and something of a gamble. Many times I felt I lost that gamble. There were no used game stores at the time either. The experience left a sour taste in my mouth. Maybe I don't give Nintendo enough credit for its Mario flavored mouthwash, and getting kids to feel in the late 80s they were winning that gamble far more than I did in the early 80s.

This kiosk would have opened several doors - the kiosk might have been more available than just where I bought my games, the game selection on the kiosk may have been bigger than the physical games on a shelf, and finally, it would have been an opportunity to reduce the loss on that wager of buying an expensive game that might be a stinker.

I think the issue would have been price - the price of the initial reprogrammable EPROM cartridge may have been high, and the price of rewriting the ROM may have also been set too high to really work.

It's an article about Xante with a pic of their kiosk, the Xanex Production Station or XPS. Looks like an 70/80's idea of a futuristic mini-computer. (Minicomputer is an older term for a cabinet or desk-sized computer, as opposed to room-sized mainframes.)

Still looking for a Romox kiosk. Sorry for all the posts. Sometimes I get my mind set on something and can't put it down.

Another wow - 'virtual inventory' discussion in 1983. Yeah, maybe Bushnell was right about the American Crash of '83 really did snuff out a lot of innovative ideas.

Dave would enjoy this discussion - even in 1983, the idea of getting around physical inventory and moving toward what we would now call a digital download was being floated as obvious and inevitable.

The Good News / Bad News for 'virtual inventory' is neat. The good already included "easy updates, fixes, et" which is exactly what digital downloads have brought us (for better or for worse). The bad includes 'questionable reliability' which is also what digital downloads have brought us.

It also goes into the loss of 'tangibles', ie, physical media. There is also a paragraph or two on piracy as mostly a social (not technical) issue, and that by moving to digital media, piracy might increase because of the loss of a person connected to the pirated media that is losing out.

I actually like the download kiosk idea a bit more than downloading games at home. At least with the kiosk I get something I can hold in my hand. Besides, Romox had a cool logo, and Xante's carts were a nice shade of blue.

$25 for the cart and $10 per game was totally reasonable. I believe I paid about $40 in that generation for many games. If I could have gotten the rewritable instead, it's a good deal relatively speaking.

I too like the kiosk idea. Modems were pretty niche in 83, especially if you got an extra phone line for it.